Happy Birthday, Compact Disc October 1, 2009
Posted by Joey in Gadgets, Music, Technology.Tags: Compact Disc, Sony, The Cars
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Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way to obsolescence.
I bought my first CD player in 1985; my first CD was, I think, The Cars by The Cars. I just plunked down major bucks for the complete remastered Beatles albums, but that’s likely to be my last major CD purchase. It’s downloads from here on out.
Oct. 1, 1982: Portable Music Enters the Spin Zone | This Day In Tech | Wired.com.
1982: Sony starts selling the first CD players to the public. Change is in the air.
Once upon a time cassettes were the preferred method of storing music. These mighty rectangles of plastic and magnetic tape allowed for easy recording, flaunted ample capacities, and were effortlessly portable. (If you weren’t worried about portability, there was still the reliable LP vinyl phonograph disc.)
And yet cassettes sucked.
Les Paul, R.I.P. August 13, 2009
Posted by Joey in Art, Gadgets, Music.Tags: Guitar, Les Paul
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A giant in the world of music. We’ll miss him.
Guitar legend-inventor Les Paul dies at age 94.
Les Paul, the guitar virtuoso and inventor who revolutionized music and created rock ‘n’ roll as surely as Elvis Presley and the Beatles by developing the solid-body electric guitar and multitrack recording, died Thursday at age 94.
Known for his lightning-fast leads, Paul performed with some of early pop’s biggest names and produced a slew of hits, many with wife Mary Ford. But it was his inventive streak that made him universally revered by guitar gods as their original ancestor and earned his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the most important forces in popular music.
Paul, who died in White Plains, N.Y., of complications from pneumonia, was a tireless tinkerer, whose quest for a particular sound led him to create the first solid-body electric guitar, a departure from the hollow-body guitars of the time. His invention paved the way for modern rock ‘n’ roll and became the standard instrument for legends like Pete Townshend and Jimmy Page.
Palm vs Apple: Palm Fights Back July 23, 2009
Posted by Joey in Gadgets, Music, Technology.Tags: Apple, iTunes, Palm Pre
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Palm Pre would sync (by pretending to be an iPod) with iTunes, until Apple released version 8.2.1 which blocked the Palm Pre. Palm strikes back with a new code load of their own. Measures and countermeasures.
Is this fun or what?
Palm webOS 1.1 now available, fixes iTunes 8.2.1 syncing.
Time to update your Pre, Palm’s just released webOS 1.1.0. Quite a bit of changes here, but most importantly, the patch notes say that it “resolves an issue preventing media sync from working with latest version of iTunes (8.2.1)” — that issue, of course, being a blockade put in place by Apple just one week ago
I Join The 21st Century July 13, 2009
Posted by Joey in Culture, Internet, Music.Tags: Californication, Facebook, Joey, Red Hot Chili Peppers
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Yes, it’s shocking but true. I bought my first song off iTunes today (Californication by the Red Hot Chili Peppers for those interested). I even have a Facebook account (and no, you can’t be my friend; I reserve that privilege for people I know in meatspace).
I’m going to hell, aren’t I?
On-Demand CD Sales Starting At Amazon May 22, 2009
Posted by Joey in Media, Music.Tags: Amazon, On-Demand CD, RIAA, TuneCore
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The beginning of the end of the RIAA. Sweet!
TuneCore, Amazon Set to Unveil On-Demand CD Sales.
TuneCore is poised to partner with Amazon’s on-demand CD-printing-and-distribution service, Wired.com has learned. It’s a deal that could put powerful new physical publishing options in the hands of musicians, even as the world goes increasingly digital.
The service is expected to be announced Thursday, linking Amazon with TuneCore, a novel digital distribution startup that’s made waves signing the likes of Trent Reznor, Keith Richards and other stars seeking a way out of the label system, as well as slews of garage bands and hopefuls on their way up.
Tunecore will charge just $31 a year in upfront fees to handle a 10-track CD from pressing to delivery, passing all other costs through to the buyer. In other words, the service promises to remove nearly all of the risks of short-run CD manufacturing, which can cost musicians hundreds or even thousands of dollars for discs that rarely sell enough to cover expenses.
Das Kapital: The Musical March 24, 2009
Posted by Joey in Culture, Music, Weird Stuff.Tags: China, Communists, Das Kapital, Karl Marx, Mao Zedong
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I didn’t realize that Karl Marx could be set to music. I had to check to make sure this wasn’t on The Onion before I posted this.
I wonder if they’re going to mention the 76 million Chinese murdered by the Communists before and during the reign of Mao Zedong, the end result of this book by Marx.
China puts on musical celebrating Karl Marx.
HIGH-kicking Chinese Marxists are set to bring communism’s most famous tract to life – as a musical.
An all-singing, all-dancing stage version of Das Kapital is being produced in Shanghai to show how the thinking of Karl Marx is as relevant in today’s economic crisis as when his book was first published in 1867, producers said yesterday.
“The entertainment and theatrical elements will help ordinary people better understand why the financial crisis is happening,” said Zhang Jun, a Fudan University economics professor, who is an advisor on the production.
Zhang said his role is to ensure Marx’s ideas are accurately represented in the stage spectacular.
It Talks March 11, 2009
Posted by Joey in Gadgets, Music, Technology.Tags: Apple, iPod Shuffle
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Apple snuck out a new iPod Shuffle. It talks to you.
It’s Been A Good Thirty Years, Compact Disk March 8, 2009
Posted by Joey in Culture, Media, Music, Technology.Tags: Compact Disk
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Gizmodo notes the 30th birthday of the compact disk. I bought my first compact disk player in 1985, about the time portable CD players cracked the $200 barrier. I don’t remember what was my first CD, but it was probably a Pink Floyd or Cars CD.
Dunno about you, but I still have an aversion to buying music off iTunes. There’s something about that shiny little disk… On the other hand, I don’t miss vinyl records at all.
Retromodo: Happy 30th Birthday, Compact Disc!.
Of course, the CD didn’t immediately take off right then and there. It needed a little help from Sony, which worked with Philips to get the format standardized. The standard they named Red Book, which included everything from playing time (initially 60 minutes), to the disc diameter to sampling frequency. Put simply, the collaboration worked out, and Red Book was a success. In the book The Compact Disc Story, Philips reps lauded the task force they established with Sony. The CD that team created was “invented collectively by a large group of people working as a team,” Philips said. If only Apple and Microsoft could say the same, no? Oh, the things they could build.
Pirate Bay Trial: All Over But the Shouting March 4, 2009
Posted by Joey in Culture, Internet, Media, Music, Technology.Tags: Filesharing, Pirate Bay
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The Pirate Bay trial is finished, verdict in April. If I was a betting man (I’m not), I’d say there’s a good chance of conviction. But do please let me know your predictions.
Pirate Bay Trial Ends; Verdict Due April 17.
The Pirate Bay trial wrapped up here Tuesday amid a media circus as attorneys for the four accused founders of the world’s most notorious BitTorrent tracker proclaimed their clients’ innocence to charges of facilitating copyright infringement.
One of the attorneys declared the 2-week trial a mockery.
“These kinds of abstract case are not supposed to be brought to the court at all,” attorney Per E. Samuelson said during his argument. “The prosecutor has not managed to keep calm in light of the enormous pressure and lobbying from record and film companies.”
Scandinavian television teams and journalists descended upon this small courtroom to see the final hours of a case generating international headlines. The three younger of the four defendants are by now media celebrities in their own right and seemed at ease with the frantic attention they provoked.
Pirate Bay Trial: “Off With Their ‘eads!” March 2, 2009
Posted by Joey in Internet, Media, Music, Technology.Tags: Filesharing, Pirate Bay
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The prosecution completed their case against The Pirate Bay today, saying, basically, “Off with their ‘eads!”. The defense will close the trial tomorrow. No word on when a verdict will be handed down.
Prosecutor, Hollywood Demand Prison for Pirate Bay Crew.
Roswall acknowledged that no pirated material was technically stored on or passed through Pirate Bay servers, but he compared the case to past prosecutions of criminal accomplices. In a Supreme Court decision from 1963, he noted, a defendant who held a friend’s coat while the friend beat someone up was considered an accomplice.
He also cited a ruling from 1996 in a case where copyrighted material was stored on the servers of the BBS owner, who was found liable. Finally, Roswall looked to a 2000 case involving mp3 files linked from a web page. He argued the case showed that merely linking to a pirated work was enough to sustain a piracy conviction.
Roswall ended his argument by demanding one year in jail for each of the defendants — half of the maximum term. He asked for fines amounting to The Pirate Bay’s gross income from advertising revenue on the site. He was able to document the equivalent of $180,000 in income from ad sales on the site, but he argued that the actual numbers are likely quite higher. Roswall claimed the site runs as many as 64 concurrent ads, which he said earned it some 10 million kronor — about $1.2 million.
